From the Mailbag: Tat’s Enough

Every week, mail floods our offices. The interns can barely keep up with the e-mails and envelopes, all filled with unsolicited opinions from our readers. On a when-we-feel-like-it basis, going to this web address will cause these unsolicited, unedited opinions to appear on your screen. Views expressed are not our own.

I miss the days when I could watch a game of March Madness with my grandchildren and not have to shield their eyes. More and more, players are using the world’s biggest stage to showcase their “body art,” which is a lot more awful than artful. What has society come to? Are a team’s name and logo now secondary to the glorified graffiti that the athletes have branded on their arms, legs, and even necks? Back in my day, my father told me if I ever got a tattoo, I’d be saying “ow” from a lot more than the sores (and the inevitable infection). College coaches need to “needle” their players in the same way. You want an unemployed skateboarder to scribble all over your bicep? Grab some long sleeves.

And a seat on the bench.

I can’t understand what the tattoos are even about, but I’m told they’re all gang symbols and profanities. Yet the NCAA sits around doing nothing about this epidermis epidemic? Fools suggest we should pay these players, but why should we trust them with money when they’ll spend it all to turn themselves into running, jumping, and dunking versions of a particularly twisted child’s refrigerator drawings? It should be more like back to the drawing board, for them.

The players of tournaments past were upstanding young men, but the new kids are tramp stamped with my seal of disapproval. It’s all part of a declining American culture that’s stained with more than just ink. The man at the center of it all sits in the Oval Office plotting to mar the skin of every citizen (you can’t see the tattoos underneath his suits, but they’re there.)

So here’s my message to NCAA basketball: until you say no to these lunks and their “parlor” games, my TV screen will be tattooed with another channel.

And while you’re at it, NCAA, time to poke a hole in all the piercings, too.